I picked up this book 8 years ago. The topic fascinated me. The book has been staring me down for almost a decade. I decided it was finally time to read it.

Roff Smith decided to chuck his job at Time magazine and ride his bike around the continent of Australia. The journey took 9 months and he rode 10,000 miles. Smith writes with ease. This is armchair travel at its best. The most enjoyable parts of this book are reading about some of the people Smith meets along the way. A group of men offer Smith a beer. This leads to a week long fishing expedition into terrain that sounds like paradise.

Smith conquers miles of desert and Australian outback. Riding this terrain is brutal. Outposts are often 100 miles apart and Smith has to ration his water to make it to the next stop.

Toward the end of the journey Smith rolls through Australian wine country. This part of the journey sounds amazing. Every cyclists dream, rolling hills, beautiful terrain and wineries along the way.

Cold Beer and Crocodiles is one of the most enjoyable books I have read in some time. Nothing heavy, certainly inspiring, and an adventure I’ll probably never conquer myself.

Signed copies of Chief Bender’s Burden are still available at the Monkey and they’re 20% off. I loved this book. It’s a great gift for any baseball fan.

The greatest American Indian baseball player of all time, Charles Albert Bender was, according to a contemporary, “the coolest pitcher in the game.” Using a trademark delivery, an impressive assortment of pitches that may have included the game’s first slider, and an apparently unflappable demeanor, he earned a reputation as baseball’s great clutch pitcher during tight Deadball Era pennant races and in front of boisterous World Series crowds. More remarkably yet, “Chief” Bender’s Hall of Fame career unfolded in the face of immeasurable prejudice.

Louis Charles Lynch (also known as Lucy) is sixty years old and has lived in Thomaston, New York, his entire life. He and Sarah, his wife of forty years, are about to embark on a vacation to Italy. Lucy’s oldest friend, once a rival for his wife’s affection, leads a life in Venice far removed from Thomaston. Perhaps for this reason Lucy is writing the story of his town, his family, and his own life that makes up this rich and mesmerizing novel, interspersed with that of the native son who left so long ago and has never looked back.

Bridge of Sighs, from the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls, is a moving novel about small-town America that expands Russo’s widely heralded achievement in ways both familiar and astonishing.

The Monkey has some great gift ideas for everyone on your list. This pick comes from Tom. Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis. It comes with the monkey seal of approval and it’s 20% off.

Charles M. Schulz, the most widely syndicated and beloved cartoonist of all time, is also one of the least understood figures in American culture. Now, acclaimed biographer David Michaelis gives us the first full-length biography of the brilliant, unseen man behind Peanuts: at once a creation story, a portrait of a native genius, and a chronicle contrasting the private man with the central role he played in shaping the national imagination. Schulz and Peanuts is the definitive epic biography of an American icon and the unforgettable characters he created.

Oliver Sacks is a great writer. Everyone loves music. So a book by Oliver Sacks about music is a sure hit. The Monkey

has Oliver Sacks’ latest book, Musicophilia. And it’s 20% off.

With the same trademark compassion and erudition he brought to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks explores the place music occupies in the brain and how it affects the human condition. In Musicophilia, he shows us a variety of what he calls “musical misalignments.” Among them: a man struck by lightning who suddenly desires to become a pianist at the age of forty-two; an entire group of children with Williams syndrome, who are hyp

ermusical from birth; people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans; and a man whose memory spans only seven seconds-for everything but music.